For the past month, we’ve been on an overdose of 1994 vibes. The main reason for that is that the Knicks and Rangers have alternated thriller nights leading up to and throughout the playoffs. They are a combined 9-2 at home in the postseason, and some would argue they should be even at 11-0. And they are moving up the rankings every day in a way they haven’t in 30 years.
And then there are other… well, ancillary things. Solar eclipse. O.J. Simpson is back in the news. Ahmad Rashad was spotted returning to the garden again. Behind the hoops and hockey, the Yankees are winning every day again. It turns out the Vancouver Canucks are still alive and well and playing in the NHL playoffs.
Something else happened Tuesday night.
Alec Barks’ Renaissance has arrived in the Garden.
He then picked up where he left off in Games 3 and 4 in Indianapolis, scoring in double figures for the third straight game (18 points) while making five 3-pointers in front of a frenzied MSG crowd. When recording…
Well, if you were alive in ’94, it must have been at least a little sad to see a forgotten sniper presented with an unexpected opportunity. It also raised hopes that Burks’ unlikely emergence would strengthen the Knicks’ core going forward. As long as they last in these playoffs.
It was just six days ago that Burks was banished instead of benched. Burks disappeared from the rotation late in the season, and even though he was on the active roster for the playoffs, it was hard to tell. Before last Friday’s Game 3, Burks had played the full 44 seconds in the Knicks’ first eight playoff games.
But it was actually much more than that. If the Knicks were in serious foul trouble and Scott Foster or Toney Brothers approached Tom Thibodeau about sending a fifth player, I half expected Thibodeau to throw Norman Dale at them. — “My team is on the floor” — and had a chance on a 4-on-5.
“I thought Alec…was really, really good off the bench,” Thibodeau said late Tuesday night, but it’s hard to imagine he won’t become an integral part of the rotation from here.
And it all goes back to that legendary spring of 1994, especially Game 7 of the Finals. Specifically, when Pat Riley sat by and watched John Starks spit out brick after brick against the Rockets. It’s a box score mixed with so much infamy that every Knicks fan knows. Anyone who was alive that spring can recite it without looking it up. He is 2 of 18 from the floor. He played 42 minutes. He kept shooting.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Knicks in the NBA playoffs
And all the while, Rolando Blackman sat idly on the bench. Riley acquired Blackman the year before because he did one thing better than anyone else in the league. That means he shot 49.3 percent in his career. The arrival of Starks reduced Blackman’s playing time, and he got into an argument with Riley in the locker room after the Knicks’ bare-knuckle defeat of the Pacers in the East finals – Blackman had his wife added to the team charter as a player. Riley was adamant that she asked for it. And he said a firm no — and that seemed to seal his fate.
He didn’t play a second in the Finals against the Rockets. And when Stark melted away, Riley put Blackman on the ice. The player soon retired from the NBA. coach? Now, 12 years later, in the 2006 NBA Finals, where the Heat would soon win Riley’s fifth title as head coach, he made a surprising confession.
“I got caught up in a short rotation,” Riley said. “That’s why we brought Rolando there. Right after that, I found out. If we were playing [him], we would have won the championship. ”
And, “That’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.”
Blackman and Riley never got a mulligan. So is Burks, and to some extent, so is Thibodeau. In other sports around here, there are people who have come out of the darkness and made it in the most important ways.
Brian Doyle replaced the injured Willie Randolph in the 1978 playoffs, batted .438 in the World Series (237 points above his career average), and should have been the MVP. Jeff Hostetler and Ottis Anderson were both left for dead by the Giants by 1990, but then the two conspired on a path to unforgettable glory. Dean Meminger came off the bench in the 1973 title game to spell out the words of his irate roommate, Earl Monroe, and Dean the Dream’s masterful pick-up of Earl the Pearl made Knicks fans laugh. He gained lifelong trust among them.
What Birx did is not unprecedented. It was just unexpected.
“Be prepared,” he said late Tuesday night. “You never know. That’s what Thisbus always tells me, and that’s what everyone tells me. Be ready. The guys play with me and pick up a lot. Playing or just working out.”
And now, thanks to Burks taking some important steps out of his basketball basement and making shots that Roe Blackman never did 30 years ago, they’re one step away from the East Finals. It’s getting to the point.
